F-Chat blocked @ work!

17 hours per week doing non-productive crap on company time? Each and every week? Over three hours per work day? IMO, that is extremely wasteful, and they are taking advantage of the company.

Heck, my sister-in-law can't spend that much time shopping on her own, and she's the world's biggest shopaholic!

 

I think you read it wrong. What he said was that while salaried employees spend 7 hours of normal business time (8-5) doing personal stuff, they also spend 10 hours of what what would be their off time working on business activities. The net benefit to the company is 3 hours extra work per week.

My personal view is that reasonable personal time at work can be good for morale and overall productivity. However, there are people that will abuse that privilege. Even if they are salaried, some people will rush through their job doing shoddy work just so they can get back to their personal activities. They don't have the pride in their work to do the best job they can. It is those people that ruin it for everybody else. It is much easier to lock down the internet than it is to reprimand/fire someone.

 

Who are you kidding that you have no one to report to. EVERYONE reports to someone, your lost productivity being on this site (and posting such a long post) is costing somewhere (not just your immediate pocket) but you could be serving your Customer even better and hence gaining more business. You live in a fools paradise if you think YOU are above it and can only squeeze your employees further. You should hold yourself to the same standard and lead by example, not sit on this site during work hours and preach.

 

It appears that most aren't able to police themselves very well as you do, at least that is what I had noticed. I think it would be great to offer that kinda benie for the folks that work for you but it just seems like if you give some an inch they take a mile if they aren't monitored, unfortunate but true. Oh by the way did you see that porn site that.....opps sorry. Regards, Vern

 

If you want something done give it to a busy person...

Sorry, but anyone who thinks they are being punished by having to do WORK during the 2 hours "slow time" while at WORK has issues and will likely be stuck WORKing in the shipping department forever (if they are not fired first). Best case scenario is they quit their "crappy" job and someone who is grateful replaces them and moves up to manager, VP or buys the whole damn company. It's better for everyone!

We start by blocking _everything_ and if someone "needs" access to something they prove how it is benificial to the company (if possible in monetary terms).

Yes!

Jason Polzer

 

/me goosesteps around the room.

 

Yes, freespeech read that wrong - we found a net benefit of 3 hours of extra productivity per week per employee. That is an average - obviously the reality is some people abuse it but most do not. With all due respect I do not believe locking down the internet is the answer - people who abuse their privileges will simply find another way to slack off. The issue needs to be addressed directly with employees that exhibit that behavior, not by removing perks for the 80% + of those employees who do not abuse the system.

As a manager, let me offer another perspective - if you have an abnormally high percentage of workers abusing privileges I am of the opinion that points to poor management, not addressing the core issues (conflict avoidance) and not correctly setting expectations with the employees on the part of the leadership team. Employees that are not as productive as they should be need to be dealt with individually - not by "punishing" all employees by removing privileges across the board.

 

Those breaks can be usefull for taking a step back and looking at the big picture, as a break from dealing with the fiddling details. I've had some significant "aha!" moments during smoke breaks.

But then, I'm a workaholic. There are those who spend the breaks talking politics or films, too.

But most office ergonomics types will tell you to get out of your chair and take a break from time to time. It cuts down on mouse elbow, and does give you a chance to clear your thoughts.

A big factor on personal web use policies will depend on the size of the enterprise and the size of the internet pipe serving it. We had to clamp down on the stock ticker sites, because the server push would bypass the web cache, burning a lot of the bandwidth that is intended for work related surfing.

(For example, pulling up the CNN home page doesn't burn much bandwidth, because it's already cached from the last guy that called it up -- the enterprise web cache can feed it to your browser without having to go out to CNN over the net feed again. But an interactive chat site requires full access across the network feed for each user. Reading is one thing, but posting can take significantly more net resources.)